This invention relates to padded rails. More particularly, it relates to padded rails which are particularly useful in conjunction with water beds.
Water beds basically comprise a large bag filled with water and support beams which surround the bag on four sides. The beams normally comprise a plurality of 2.times.10's. The upper edges of the 2.times.10's formed the top surfaces of the sides of the early water beds. It was found that the narrow hard surfaces of the 2.times.10's were uncomfortable to the user, particularly when getting in and out of the bed and furthermore were aesthetically unattractive. A solution to this problem came about by the development of padded rails used on the long sides of the water beds and often used at the foot and sometimes at the head of the bed.
The standard padded rail includes three elongated pieces of particle board or other wooden material which are affixed together forming a U-shaped channel. The particle board is then surrounded with foam rubber padding and a cover made of a material such as vinyl is received over the padding and affixed to the particle board normally by the means of staples. While the particle board-type padded rail enhances the attractiveness and comfort of the water bed, it has several drawbacks. First of all, the particle board tends to mar the surface of the support beams of the bed and secondly, the particle board was rather heavy and thus the padded rails were rather cumbersome to use and the shipping costs were rather high. Furthermore, because of the high weight, the product did not lend itself well for direct sales to consumers.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,554,039 issued to Max James represents, in certain respects, an improvement over the old particle board-type padded rail. The James padded rail, which is shown in FIG. 1, utilizes a U-shaped channel made from lightweight polyvinylchloride (PVC) in lieu of the particle board; however, because the PVC channel would not readily hold staples, the vinyl covering was glued to the inside of the channel. One major drawback to this construction is that it has been found that the glue does not readily hold the vinyl covering to the PVC channel over a period of time, resulting in peeling of the vinyl covering from the channel which can cause the structure to come apart and is otherwise unsightly. Also, the James rail has a rather high profile which causes problems for a person getting into and out of the bed. Furthermore, in order to provide a mechanism to hold the padded rail to the beam, the PVC channel was biased inwardly from the top of the channel towards the opening in the channel. That type of construction requires close manufacturing tolerance so that the channel is not over-biased or under-biased, thus increasing the cost of manufacturing and further often resulting in ununiform products.